


The devil's in the lack of detail

by InkkEmulsion



Series: {{FILE BANK - TREPAN/SHOCKWAVE}} [3]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Drug Mentions, Mnemosurgery, Needles, Other, Surgery mentions, basically all the dark things, if you are of the sensitive composition, or are easily depressed like me, perhaps give this one a miss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 08:43:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15069461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkkEmulsion/pseuds/InkkEmulsion
Summary: Mechs have survived point blank shots to the spark before.Who says Megatron checked to see if he finished the job? If swindle of all mechs can claw his way back from certain termination, then Trepan of the institute can rise again much like an eldritch horror made of spite and fury.





	The devil's in the lack of detail

Blackness.

They say that when your spark finally extinguishes that an afterlife lies beyond it with the god who gave you shape in the waking world which you once roamed but it had been a lie. Primus… 

He was dead. He had finally been offlined; the thought occurred to him dully, like looking at the rippling surface of water from the underneath and not being able to quite grasp the image it reflected back. He was dead, greyed out and a mass of vaporised plastics and metal from the canon of a leader he should of finished the job of back on Messentine. 

Trepan couldn’t even muster the energy to feel anything in response, this was a world of nothingness now. He couldn’t understand even if he wanted to.

Only he wasn’t quite done yet.

White hot agony made the surgeon scream out into the nothingness he knew but there was no sound- no frame to contort and so he endured as this feeling persisted until that too vanished into the void again. Trepan was alone again, and still he dwelled in the infinite reaches of a realm that had no explanation nor comprehension. His thoughts however were clearer now, both echoing around for miles and yet silent in nature. Wherever that pain had gone, it had left behind a sense of clarity. He could think and understand, but not the blackness. He could think about his last moments but that made the pain flash so he chose to remember Messentine.

The clinic, the strict schedule and rules so tight nobody else but himself and a few others could navigate with ease. The institute, and with a vague sense of dread, what had lead to this. Overlord. The name was repulsive and bitter, nearly as bitter as the other one but this he could tolerate.

Then the pain returned- blistering and he was screaming again only the white hotness invaded his vision and suddenly Trepan wasn’t suspended in darkness anymore and he was writhing, vocals glitching and heaving as at last he could hear again. He could only scream, but from the lack of moving he was restrained, this much the surgeon knew. 

Whatever had happened, he had been revived from the certainty of death somehow and his frame was not complying to his wishes. He must of been screaming for hours, tugging and snarling at restrains as the sudden snap back to reality came to take its toll. Somewhere in the background a lab full of scientists worked stoically, restructuring the small mnemosurgeons frame and injecting lines, IV dripping with essential fluids which kept him from dipping back into the oblivion. 

A conversation continued unaffected between a purple warframe and a scientist turned medic. “The cost does not matter. I am doing this to see if I can.”

Trepan wasn’t sure what he preferred, eternal nothingness or this noisy chaotic hell he had been thrust into but frag if it made him focus on what mattered. Living. Surviving, by any method possible.

Eventually despite his fight he did fall back, but only through being forced and even then through the tears and the choked sobs of demands for help (not cries, he was not that weak) he held the unfocused gaze of the doctors as he slipped away again. For once, he welcomed oblivion. The next trip into consciousness was still painful but not enough to scream. He became aware someone was speaking directly to him, asking questions over and over until finally he responded.

“De-sig… Nation… Trep-an. Occupa-ti-on. Mne-e-emosurg-ge…on.” Whoever asked seemed pleased, shifting in their seat by the sound of it. Trepan didn’t dare look up, he was already shaking from the physical exertion not to break his vocalizer from use again. His voice was glitching and strained, and thank primus they didn’t ask more questions but whoever it was talking was no longer speaking to him. Instead his frame entered a state of complete and utter numbness, a stasis without the recharge making his antennae slump on the medical berth he was still restrained against and the tense bowing arch of his spinal strut follow in a similar fashion. His vision wavered but the sudden best of both worlds had him unknowingly giggly, smiling to himself as the world continued to progress around him.

It was a constant after that, answer things right and he would receive treatment to numb his pain, and when that progressed he was told to move now unrestrained limbs while lying on his back. Bit by bit Trepan focused, understanding that this was physical and mental therapy for someone who had sustained damage thought unrepairable. 

He was easing his frame into moving, but not his spinal cord and he wasn’t oblivious as to why. He had done this for others before, and he now knew what the blackness was from before. After the blast it had somehow not hit his spark directly and instead his casing and armour took the brunt. Whoever had found him had severed the connection of his brain module and spark and relocated them in an artificial chamber until his frame was mostly repaired-

Mostly.

His armour had melted together, tubing and chevron unsightly and horribly marred for all to see, once spectacular and immaculate white now scorched a permanent tar colour. Articulation had to be completely redone and even now his joints still grinded against one another, and his back was still completely immobile but his fragile spark was stable. The sudden burst into reality and the screaming had been from the first reconnection of his mind and essence, doctors needing him awake and able to feel to confirm the operation was a success.

Moving his back was the next challenge, accepting the support of doctors despite his ego and holding on for dear life as they lifted the berth upright with himself still strapped down on it. He was standing- actually standing, but still pressed firmly in place. He let them handle him like a doll, did what he was told because despite internal hatred brewing all directed at his useless state someone had saw fit to give him a second chance. He didn’t plan on wasting it, not when there was a helm marked for surgery that had yet to heed its call.

\------

Many months later, Trepan walked with ease again. He had been released on medical leave, the institute more than happy to give their top mnemosurgeon time to recover after their unending loyalty to them, but it had all been with the unnerving knowledge that he was on a timer. His spark lacked the innermost energon that once surrounded it and had grown weaker with its absence than it already had before- he needed material for his spark too but those kinds of things even the institute had no hand in. Frames were plentiful but the energon and spark needed to remain untouched. And so he was faced with a timer, and the ever growing hunger for revenge.

Revenge against life, revenge against the hand he had been dealt. Revenge against him.

So as Trepan sat up from his berth, blinds letting slats of artificial daylight in to slant across his once mangled now less so frame, he steepled his digits together and for the first time since the incident let the needles in each digit tip pressurise and extend. Each one was menacing and could pierce through armour inches thick after he invested in an upgrade. Most of his sick pay had gone towards it and the new set of plating to cover his melted protoform but it had been worth it. A terrible idea most foul entered his mind and a slow sinister smile stretched out across his faceplates.

If the world was going to rip out his spark and innermost, and leave him with nothing…

He was just going to take someone else’s.


End file.
